A Backhanded Compliment
April 17, 2012
A year ago this month I listened to the attorney for another statewide high school athletic association pose this question: “Why is it that people quite readily accept inflexible age limitations over a broad spectrum of American life, including sports, but presuppose it is wrong for school sports?”
This attorney was in the middle of a controversy that more recently has visited the MHSAA: an overage student seeking relief from a universally applied maximum age rule. The speaker was perplexed and frustrated by the double standard.
Part of the reason for the double standard rests in the reality that people value the school sports experience so much more than other parts of life, including other sports experiences. Because they want the opportunity to play, they resort to litigation in an attempt to create the right to play.
Another part of the reason school sports is challenged on an issue on which other programs get a free pass is that school sports has a centralized authority, close to home. State high school associations are readily accessible targets, easier both to find and to fight with than most other entities with age restrictions.
And, of course, part of the reason for the double standard is the proximity of interscholastic athletics to academics – the former extracurricular, the latter curricular – the former a privilege for most teenagers, the latter a right of all citizens to age 26.
The reasons school sports are attacked on this issue while other entities are not are reasons really complimentary to school sports: the program is popular, accessible and connected to education. None of these features of school sports, or its age limitation, should change.
The Golden Rule
October 24, 2014
Competitive athletics are filled with rules. They include contest limitations and eligibility, conduct and playing rules. But apparently the “Golden Rule” is not one of those rules.
In competitive athletics, teams look for competitive advantage, which is often at odds with the spirit of “Do unto others as you would want them to do unto you.” Seeking competitive advantage sometimes devolves from a legitimate attempt to exploit an opponent’s weakness to rule-shading gamesmanship and, in its worst form, to blatant cheating. Do unto others what you can get away with.
Furthermore, in competitive athletics, emotions often run high – both among participants and spectators – and this leads easily to overheated partisan perspective, lack of good reason and loss of behavior that is respectful of others’ beliefs and feelings.
It’s hard to treat nicely people who act nasty. It requires, in fact, a supercharged Golden Rule that says “Do unto others better than they may do unto you.”
It’s hard to treat people better than they treat you; but if there were ever a place where there is more opportunity to do so, it’s in competitive sports where people are blinded by partisanship for their team or their child. Perhaps it’s only a political election campaign that presents as tough an environment for the Golden Rule.
Years ago in a radio commentary, Character Counts’ Michael Josephson said: “People of character treat others respectfully whether they deserve it or not. I’m reminded of the politician who refused to get in a name-calling match with an opponent, saying, ‘Sir, I will treat you like a gentleman, not because you are one, but because I am one.’ Sure, it’s hard to treat people better than they treat us; but it’s important to realize what’s at stake. If we allow nasty, crude and selfish people to drag us down to their level, they set the tone of our lives and shape us in their image.”